Fool Me Once

SECTION THREE

WHISTLEBLOWERS

After my TEDx talk about whistleblowers ran on the TED website in October 2018, something odd happened.1 At least it was odd to me, since I had never given a talk that reached such a wide audience.

Within less than an hour, my inbox was flooded with emails. Many thanked me for recognizing them and not berating them, as so many people had done. Others wanted to tell me about the fallout they’d experienced after “whistling.” And then there were those people who told me that my talk had inspired them to come forward.

“Your talk was the last straw on the camel’s back,” Tricia Newbold wrote.

That name wasn’t familiar to me at the time, though now it is. Tricia told the world about how senior officials in the Trump White ...